When Russia invaded Georgia last month, Peace Corps volunteers there were evacuated to Armenia. It’s a heck of a thing to be evacuated like that and then just have to sit and wait (in another foreign country) for a month. Of their 80 volunteers, most ended their service and went back to America, but 20 or so continued on. Eight came to Albania.
This is a billboard in Durres. It reads “When elegant dreams become realities!”It’s an advertisement for rice.
August in Albania means the beach, weddings, gjiros, okra and best of all, energy and water shortages. In Durres, we’ve had no water for about 19 hours a day, from 5pm to 6am, then on and off for the rest of the day. 20 minutes here, 2 hours there — there’s nothing that resembles a schedule. So all those things that we need water for are subject to the whims of the people at the water factory, or wherever it comes from. I blame a neglected infrastructure, corruption, and indifference. But I have learned to enjoy bathing with a bucket. It’s invigorating!
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
   - Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley 1818
Today’s top two Albania News RSS feeds are “Albania Comes Alive” followed by “Albania Faces Epidemic of Suicides.”
Here’s a video I made of the excavation. It’s also my first YouTube post.
Welcome to another installment of “OSHA? We Don’t Need No Stinking OSHA!” This week’s episode: “Garbage Disposal at the Construction Site.”
